On May 24, 2018, the
President signed the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer
Protection Act (the Act), a section of which amends the Home Mortgage
Disclosure Act (HMDA). [1] The Act provides partial exemptions for some insured
depository institutions and insured credit unions from certain HMDA
requirements. [2] The partial exemptions are generally available to insured
depository institutions and insured credit unions:

For closed-end mortgage
loans if the institution originated fewer than 500 closed-end mortgage
loans in each of the two preceding calendar years.

For open-end lines of
credit if the institution originated fewer than 500 open-end lines of
credit in each of the two preceding calendar years.

For closed-end mortgage loans
or open-end lines of credit subject to the partial exemptions, the Act states
that the “requirements of [HMDA section 304(b)(5) and (6)]” shall not apply.
Accordingly, for these transactions, those institutions are exempt from the
collection, recording, and reporting requirements for some, but not all, of the
data points specified in current Regulation C.

The Bureau expects later this
summer to provide further guidance on the applicability of the Act to HMDA data
collected in 2018. [3]

2018 Loan/Application
Registers (LARs) formatting and
submission

For all institutions filing
HMDA data collected in 2018, the Act will not affect the format of the LARs:

LARs will be formatted
according to the previously-released 2018 Filing Instructions Guide for
HMDA Data Collected in 2018 (2018 FIG). [4]

If an institution does
not report information for a certain data field due to the Act’s partial
exemptions, the institution will enter an exemption code for the field
specified in a revised 2018 FIG that the Bureau expects to release later
this summer.

All LARs will be
submitted to the same HMDA Platform. A beta version of the HMDA Platform
for submission of data collected in 2018 will be available later this year
for filers to test. [5]

Compliance statement

As announced in December
2017, the Bureau does not intend to require data resubmission for HMDA data
collected in 2018 and reported in 2019, unless data errors are material.
Furthermore, the Bureau does not intend to assess penalties with respect to
errors in data collected in 2018 and reported in 2019. Collection and
submission of the 2018 HMDA data will provide financial institutions an
opportunity to identify any gaps in their implementation of amended Regulation
C and make improvements in their HMDA compliance management systems for future
years. Any examinations of 2018 HMDA data will be diagnostic to help
institutions identify compliance weaknesses, and the Bureau will credit
good-faith compliance efforts.

[1] HMDA is implemented by
Regulation C, 12 CFR part 1003.

[2] Pub. L. 115-174, section
104(a) (to be codified at 12 USC 2803).

[3] The partial exemptions
are not available to insured depository institutions that do not meet certain
Community Reinvestment Act performance evaluation rating standards. Guidance
will include information on how this provision will be implemented.

[5] The FFIEC’s HMDA Platform
and filing resources and tools are available at
ffiec.cfpb.gov.

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The Bureau of
Consumer Financial Protection is a 21st century agency that helps consumer
finance markets work by regularly identifying and addressing outdated,
unnecessary, or unduly burdensome regulations, by making rules more effective,
by consistently enforcing federal consumer financial law, and by empowering
consumers to take more control over their economic lives. For more information,
visit consumerfinance.gov.